Serbian Srebrenica Suspect ‘Slit His Wrists’: Lawyer

The landmark trial in Belgrade court for the massacre of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in the village of Kravica was postponed because a defendant reportedly slit his wrists several days before the hearing.

Items found at the warehouse in Kravica where the massacre took place. Photo: ICTY/Flickr.

The lawyer for Dragomir Parovic, one of eight former Bosnian Serb police officers charged with killing some of the 1,300 Bosniak victims in Kravica, told Belgrade Higher Court on Wednesday that his client had intentionally injured himself and been admitted to hospital.

“According to my unofficial information, Parovic cut his veins about ten days ago… He is currently in a psychiatric ward,” Parovic’s lawyer Vladan Stefanovic told the court.

Stefanovic said that he could not substantiate what happened to Parovic because he only found out on Monday and had no time to get the hospital records.

He added that he was informed about Parovic’s current condition by his client’s ex-wife, and suggested that the court officially requests the hospital documents.

But presiding judge Mirjana Ilic noted that hearings in the Kravica case have been repeatedly postponed due to various defendants, including Parovic, claiming they were sick.

Ilic ordered that Parovic be brought to court for the next hearing, which she scheduled for Thursday.

Before the hearing was postponed, there was an argument between families of the victims and the nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj, who came to support the defendants along with members of his Serbian Radical Party.

Seselj was telling the victims’ family members that there was no planned murder of 1,300 Bosniaks in Kravica, and hurled insults at Stasa Zajovic from the anti-war NGO Women in Black, saying she should have been strangled at birth.

The court security did not react for about 15 minutes, until one spectator demanded that they interrupt Seselj. The head of security said that the two groups might be physically separated in future hearings.

The killings in the warehouse in Kravica were among several massacres by Bosnian Serb forces after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995 that left at least some 7,000 Bosniak men and boys dead.

Eight former members of a police special brigade from Bosnia’s Serb-led entity Repubika Srpska are indicted for committing a war crime against civilians in Kravica on July 14, 1995.

Nedeljko Milidragovic, Aleksa Golijanin, Milivoje Batinica, Aleksandar Dacevic, Bora Miletic, Jovan Petrovic, Dragomir Parovic and Vidosav Vasic are accused of organising and participating in the shooting of more than 100 civilians in the warehouse.

Serbian prosecution charged them in 2015 and the trial opened in February 2017, but was plagued by delays.

So far more than 1,300 Bosniak civilians who were massacred in the warehouse in Kravica have been identified, after their bodies were found in several mass graves in Bosnia and Herzegovina.